Hello, I'm Julia Turner, and this is a slate spoiler special for the finale of Breaking Bad.

It is all that anybody at the slate offices has been talking about for the past weeks, months, years, decades.

It feels like forever. It seems to, Breaking Bad Fever seems to have also swept to the Internet at large.

So today we have convened a panel of experts to discuss whether the Breaking Bad finale was a smashing success and the best landing stick for any show ever of all time or a horrible, disappointing slough of despond, which we will nitpick extensively.

Joining me today is Willa Paskin, Slate's TV critic.

Hi, Willa. Hi. John Swansberg, Slate's

culture editor and editorial director. Hey, Julia. And June Thomas, our culture critic. Sure.

All right. June has so many hats. Breaking Bad correspondent.

Yes. Albuquerque Bureau, Chief. I have never been to the American Southwest.

Except for on the screens of AMC.

Absolutely.

Week after week.

All right, guys, in the grand tradition of the spoiler special, I should acknowledge

for listeners that if you have not yet watched the finale of Breaking Bad, we are going

to talk about what happens in it. So don't continue listening to this. If you have not yet watched the finale of Breaking Bad. We are going to talk about what happens in it.

So don't continue listening to this. If you have not yet seen what befalls, Walt, finally.

Willa, do you want to describe briefly the contours of the finale and then give us your take on it?

Sure. So in the finale, Walt, who has been holed up in New Hampshire, makes it back to Albuquerque and in sort of short order, straightens out his life.

He goes and sees Gretchen and Elliott, his former colleagues, and gets them to give his money to his children.

He goes and sees Skyler and makes vends with her.

He goes and frees Jesse.

Then he kills all the Nazis.

...